Monday, December 28, 2009

Researchers followed 3,020 people aged 65 and above for the study. Those who had Alzheimer's at the start of the study were 69% less likely to be admitted to hospital with cancer than those free of the disease at the start and those with cancer at the study's start were 43% less likely to develop Alzheimer's than the cancer free.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

The 23-year-old man suspected of trying to bring down a Northwest Airlines jet that landed in Detroit, Michigan, is the son of a man who recently stepped down as chairman of a bank in Nigeria. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is the son of former First Bank PLC chairman Alhaji Umar Mutallab in northern Nigeria. Abdulmutallab suffered burns when he ignited a small explosive device aboard the plane; he was hospitalized in Michigan for his burns. His plans were foiled by crew members and passengers. Apparently, Abdulmutallab received a college degree in London, England, where he lived for three years. A spokesman at the University College of London said that a student by the name of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was enrolled in the department of mechanical engineering from September 2005 to June 2008. The college could not confirm whether the former student and Abdulmutallab are the same person.

A Lebanese man who hosted a popular TV show where he gave callers advice and sometimes predicted the future was sentenced to death by a court in Saudi Arabia for sorcery. Ali Hussain Sibat's popular call-in show was broadcast on a satellite TV channel in Arabic around the Middle East from Beirut. In May 2008, Sibat traveled to Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. His lawyer, May al-Khansa, says Saudi religious police recognized Sibat from his TV work and arrested him. Human rights groups say such cases are on the rise in the strictly religious country. Saudi officials have arrested Saudis and non-Saudis, Muslims and non-Muslims on sorcery charges. Recently, a Saudi man was arrested for smuggling a book about witchcraft into the country. An Asian man was accused of using his powers to solve marital disputes. And a third man was given a death sentence for trying to learn magic. In 2007, Saudi authorities executed an Egyptian pharmacist for sorcery.

The head of an Orthodox Jewish sect has been sentenced to two years in prison for a tax evasion and money-laundering scheme that continued over a decade, spanned two continents, and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in lost revenue, authorities said. Naftali Tzi Weisz, 61, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based grand rabbi of the Spinka sect, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in August 2009 for his part in a scheme in which people made tax-exempt donations to charitable organizations and were later reimbursed for up to 95% of their contributions. The ruse allowed contributors to claim bogus tax deductions, even though most of their money was funneled back to them via international transfers, overseas accounts and an elaborate underground banking network that wound through Los Angeles' downtown jewelry district, according to authorities. In addition to Weisz, other religious leaders and businessmen have been convicted of taking part in the scheme and sentenced to prison terms ranging from four months to two years. The plot was revealed through an informant, wiretaps and hidden cameras, prosecutors said.

The 54-year-old organized a sham Muslim ceremony between his son, then 16, and the girl at his home south-east London in March 2008. The boy got an 18-month supervision order for rape. The fathers of the boy and girl were both jailed for three years for inciting a child to engage in sexual activity following an illegal marriage. The boy's mother, 54, was given a 12-month jail term, suspended for two years, for the same offense. She was also ordered to do 200 hours of community service.

A Chinese man has pleaded guilty to killing a Virginia Tech graduate student at a restaurant in January 2009, attacking her with a knife and decapitating her. Haiyang Zhu, 26, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in connection with the death of Xin Yang, a graduate student studying accounting at Virginia Tech. Xin, 22, from Beijing, China, had begun her studies at Virginia Tech only two weeks before she was killed at the Au Bon Pain restaurant in the university's Graduate Life Center. Haiyang, a native of Ningbo, China, was taken into custody at the scene. Xin's slaying was the first on the Virginia Tech campus since April 16, 2007, when Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and professors before turning a gun on himself.

The new finding suggests that body-mass index (BMI) guidelines may need to be tailored to specific racial groups to better reflect risk, experts say. Adipose (fat) tissue is found throughout the body. Subcutaneous adipose tissue is found just under the skin, while visceral adipose tissue is found in the abdominal cavity around the organs. Fat settling around the organs has been linked to development of obesity-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. But you can't tell just by looking at someone how much visceral fat someone has. Even a pot belly won't tell you for sure because visceral fat is deep within the body cavity. In the study, researchers used computer tomography (CT scans) and dual- energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) to measure visceral fat in about 1,400 white men and women and 570 black men and women aged 18 to 84. Participants' height, weight, BMI and total body fat composition were also measured. At a given body fat percentage, black men and women had lower visceral fat than white men and women. Conversely, blacks also tended to have higher subcutaneous fat than whites. Researchers controlled for age and smoking status, among other variables. Despite the tendency to have less visceral fat, black Americans are still at higher risk of dying from obesity-related diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. One explanation for this is that blacks have higher overall obesity rates overall. About 31% of white adults and 45% of black adults are obese, according to the study. The findings bring up the issue of whether the "one-size-fits-all" BMI guidelines apply equally to all races. Previous research has suggested there may be racial variations in what constitutes a healthy BMI. Diabetes risk for Asians start to rise at a BMI of about 23, for example. An optimal BMI for blacks may also vary somewhat.

Frum’s bravest stance is for immigration restriction. He even links occasionally to VDARE.com and to my blog. He was missing in action on the crucial immigration issue for a while, but now it has become a fairly routine, if limited, part of his repertoire.

Unfortunately, Frum hasn’t figured out any way to make immigration restriction sound cooler to all those Washington D.C. college graduates he wants the GOP to appeal to (other than to try to silence VDARE.com).

This independent-minded view on immigration is very much to Frum’s credit because he is Jewish (not just ethnocentrically, but also religiously) in an era when Ellis Island schmaltz has drowned out most intelligent debate over immigration. The sad thing is that Frum can’t call attention to his personal triumph of reason over prejudice, because he is driven to sputtering outrage whenever anybody points out the substantial correlation between neocon ideology and Jewishness.

So, I’ll do it for him:

Frum deserves praise for ranking with Mickey Kaus as one of the very few prominent Jewish pundits who, through study of the facts and sheer reasoning power, has publicly come to the conclusion that America needs less immigration.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

New research shows that Argentineans carry a large fraction of European genetic heritage in their Y-chromosomal (94.1%) and autosomal (78.5%) DNA, but their mitochondrial gene pool is mostly of Native American ancestry (53.7%) while African heritage is small in all three genetic systems (less than 4%).

Monday, December 14, 2009

The average scores of white D.C. fourth-graders over the past two years grew from 262 to 270 (on a scale of 500), but their African American peers' rose just three points, from 209 to 212. The achievement gap actually grew between 2007 and 2009, from 53 to 58 points. African American progress in the eighth grade remained essentially flat, dipping a statistically insignificant one point, from 245 to 244. Average white scores were not included in the test results because the sample size wasn't large enough. The picture across a six-year stretch isn't more encouraging. The gap separating white and black fourth-graders in 2003, when the first National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the District was given, was 60 scale points (262 to 202). Although the scores achieved by children in both groups have increased during this period, the difference has barely narrowed to 58. Some education advocates in the District expressed concern recently that the gains celebrated by Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) were propelled largely by white students who are already high achievers.

Danish scientists say appearance alone can predict survival, after they studied 387 pairs of twins. The researchers asked nurses, trainee teachers and peers to guess the age of the twins from mug shots. Those rated younger-looking tended to outlive their older-looking sibling, the British Medical Journal reports. The researchers also found a plausible biological explanation for their results. Key pieces of DNA called telomeres, which indicate the ability of cells to replicate, are also linked to how young a person looks. A telomere of shorter length is thought to signify faster ageing and has been linked with a number of diseases. In the study, the people who looked younger had longer telomeres.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Somali Information Minister Dahir Gelle said that the bomber's parents, who live in Copenhagen, identified their son's body from photographs. Reports say he left Somalia when he was a child and spent 20 years in Denmark, before returning to Somalia in 2008. He reportedly joined the hard-line Islamist group al-Shabab - although they have previously denied the attack. Al-Shabab and other radical Islamist groups control much of the country.

The Human Genome Organisation's (HUGO) Pan-Asian SNP Consortium carried out a study of almost 2,000 people across the continent. Their findings support the hypothesis that Asia was populated primarily through a single migration event from the south. The researchers found genetic similarities between populations throughout Asia and an increase in genetic diversity from northern to southern latitudes. The team screened genetic samples from 73 Asian populations for more than 50,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These are variations in pieces of the DNA code, which can be compared to find out how closely related two individuals are genetically. The study found that, as expected, individuals who were from the same region, or who shared a common language also had a great deal in common genetically.

The overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community. Ministry of Justice figures for 2007 - 2008 show that while only 2.2% of Britons aged ten or above are black, 14% of criminal cases tried in a crown court involve black suspects and 80% of gun crime in London is black on black, often involving boys in their teens.

Monday, December 7, 2009

A proposal to bless South Africa's World Cup stadiums by slaughtering a cow in each one has caused concern among animal rights activists. The Makhonya Royal Trust, which put forward the idea, described the cattle killing ritual as a true African way of blessing the 2010 tournament. The row comes as a South African judge refused to stop a separate traditional Zulu bull-killing ceremony from going ahead, instead calling on parliament to look at the issue.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

African American and Hispanic adults who smoke menthol cigarettes may be less likely to quit smoking than those who smoke regular cigarettes, a new study by researchers at the UMDNJ-School of Public Health has found. The researchers analyzed data from the 2005 National Health Interview Survey and identified 7,815 current and former cigarette smokers who had reported at least one attempt to quit smoking. Just 43.7% of African American adults and 48.1% of Hispanic adults who smoked menthol cigarettes were able to quit smoking. Overall, the researchers noted that non-whites tend to smoke fewer cigarettes per day and are about three times more likely than whites to smoke menthol cigarettes.

Tensions between black and Asian students at a public high school in Philadelphia erupted in a series of assaults over two days, leading to 10 suspensions and several students seeking medical treatment. Asian students at South Philadelphia High School say two off-campus fights and a lunchroom attack left them feeling unsafe and helpless, in part because they say school security guards often turn a blind eye. The school, with some 1,200 students, is 70% black and 18% Asian. It serves mostly low-income neighborhoods south of downtown and has been labeled persistently dangerous by the state, based on the number of safety incidents reported.

Blacks and Hispanics in Illinois have died from swine flu at double the rate it has killed whites in the state, and swine flu has hospitalized the two minority populations at more than triple the rate for whites. The hospitalization rate for H1N1 flu among blacks and Hispanics in Illinois is 23 per 100,000, but only 7 per 100,000 for whites. The death rate from H1N1 flu for the two minority populations in the state has been 6 to 7 per million but 3 per million for whites.

Officially, Iraq is a colorblind society that treats black people with equality and respect. But on the packed dirt streets of Zubayr, Iraq’s scaled-down version of Harlem, African-Iraqis talk of discrimination so steeped in Iraqi culture that they are commonly referred to as abd — slave in Arabic — prohibited from interracial marriage and denied even menial jobs. Historians say that most African-Iraqis arrived as slaves from East Africa as part of the Arab slave trade starting about 1,400 years ago. They worked in southern Iraq’s salt marshes and sugar cane fields. Though slavery — which in Iraq included Arabs as well as Africans — was banned in the 1920s, it continued until the 1950s, African-Iraqis say.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Scientists working on mice have highlighted a specific gene that, although carried by both sexes, appears to be active only in males. They believe it allows males to grow bigger bodies - but at the expense of their longevity. Although the study was conducted on mice, the researchers believe it could apply to all mammals - including humans.